Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy is donating $100,000 from his political fund to the progressive organizing group Indivisible — the latest in a series of donations he says total nearly $1 million to grassroots groups across the country taking on the Trump administration.
Murphy, of Connecticut, declared in an interview that the usual way politicians raise money — stockpiling assets in the years before they’re on the ballot again — doesn’t meet the moment for the Democratic Party, which is trying to mobilize against President Donald Trump and Republicans. And he claimed that the stakes of this political moment are about democracy itself.
“We may not have another election, at least a free and fair election, if we don’t stop this slide away from free speech and democracy quickly. And what we know from history is that the only way to stop a, you know, would-be tyrant from cratering, from destroying a democracy is mass mobilization,” Murphy said.
“There’s something magic that happens when millions of people are mobilized all around the country,” he continued. “It just throws sand in the gears of an effort to try to convert a democracy to something very different.”
In response, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement, "Right before Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Chris Murphy told his supporters they were in a 'war' and needed to do 'whatever is necessary' to win. In the wake of radical left-wing violence, Murphy has doubled down by peddling insane conspiracy theories like this one."
Murphy initially built a reputation in the Senate as a backroom, bipartisan dealmaker on key issues like foreign policy, but he has taken a more aggressive partisan tack in Trump’s second term. In a March interview with NBC News, he said he was seeking to “build up a movement and try to buttress mobilization all around the country.” And since then, he has been a vocal advocate in the Senate and on social media pushing back against Trump’s plans and pledging financial support to organizing groups around the country.
Indivisible, the progressive-aligned nonprofit group that has been holding “No Kings” rallies across the country to protest Trump, is the latest recipient of those dollars. Murphy also invested in groups that mobilize on issues like Medicaid or opposing the GOP’s recent tax and spending bill, as well as groups that organize young people, Latinos and rural voters across a variety of states of varying degrees of political competitiveness, including Michigan, Louisiana, Utah, North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin and South Dakota.
Murphy said he made the final decision to send a six-figure sum to Indivisible after what he called “the attempt to silence Jimmy Kimmel,” calling on his colleagues to “choose to do the same thing now that it’s so absolutely clear that freedom of speech is at risk.”
“There are senators and House members sitting on millions of dollars, and my warning is pretty simple — you may never get to spend that money,” he said, taking a shot at prominent Democrats. “We are far too optimistic about our ability to get to November of 2026 as Trump tries to destroy the ability of mainstream media to tell the true story.”
Republicans have been fiercely critical of Democrats who frame the political battle with Trump and Republicans as one in which democracy is at risk or say they are standing against tyranny or creeping fascism, arguing in the wake of conservative activist Kirk’s killing that such rhetoric stokes political violence.
Asked for his response last week at a news conference on Capitol Hill, Murphy replied, “We have to tell the truth, and the truth is hard to hear right now.”
“The truth is that Donald Trump is trying to destroy our democracy,” he said, adding that “we have no obligation to sugarcoat the gravity of this moment. The only way we save this nation is if the people of this country rise up in peaceful protest, if they mobilize, all across America.”
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Murphy said the groups he’s funding are “not always overly about framing the Republican message versus the Democratic message,” citing some groups that do nonpartisan voter registration and organizing. But there are also groups like Indivisible, which describes itself on its website as a movement to “resist the GOP’s agenda” that was “brought together by a practical guide to resist the Trump agenda.”
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Murphy said his party isn’t “doing enough” and called on his colleagues to follow suit to “build out not just mobilization, but our own information infrastructure, as well.”
Of the showdown in Congress over government funding, Murphy said, “I think my vote is easily gettable, but [Republicans] don’t want it.”
“We have no obligation to fund the destruction of our democracy,” he said. Democratic leaders have proposed their own continuing resolution to temporarily fund the government with various health care and other provisions attached, while Republicans have remained firm on a short-term bill that would extend current funding levels.
“So if this upcoming budget doesn’t include any provisions that push back against Trump’s lawlessness, I think people are going to scratch their heads if a bunch of Democrats sign on notwithstanding,” he added.
Asked which other Democrats are helping fund and build a broader movement, he cited Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
The early financial moves among potential 2028 presidential hopefuls are showing up in different ways, as some of them look to take the party in a new direction after the 2024 election. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer launched her Fight Like Hell PAC to support certain candidates running for office, for example.
“The Democratic Party is not popular today, and so that means that the DNC is going to have trouble raising money for the foreseeable future. So we can complain about that, or we can do something about it,” Murphy said.
“There are individual Democratic leaders who have the ability to raise a lot of money right now because we have credibility, and so I think that means we have an obligation to take our ability to raise resources and not just use it to fill our coffers and show personal future political strength, but to put it on the ground right now,” he said. “If 20 or 30 major Democratic leaders started putting this kind of money on the ground, we could fund something pretty significant.”
